Just because they are willing to steal doesn't mean that they could be easily compromised by foreign or terrorist agents and their privileged positions used by said agents to sneak something or someone past security. No, I'm sure these TSA folks know where to draw the line between just a little illegal and actually wrong.

Just like that who lost his iPad on a plane, then later photos of the thief showed up on his son's computer. Idiots don't realize that most people have another device that can track them. Although in first instance his iPad is still missing.. Didn't turn on tracker.

Ed Willy:Anyone know if there is a TSA Watch blog out there somewhere? I think a single source to watch and collect the abuses of this agency would be helpful in mounting a reform or removal of the TSA

I had a 2000 dollar laptop once. That was around 8 or 9 years ago though. It was one of the first laptops with a 64 bit CPU in it. It also had a fairly fast DVD burner and a Radeon 9700 with a 1400x1050 display. Those were pretty impressive specs at the time.

Of course it was an Acer so it also started to fall apart after only a year :(

But hey, I wasn't the one that had to pay for it and it was price competitive at the time since 64 bit laptops were almost completely unheard of.

Ed Willy:Anyone know if there is a TSA Watch blog out there somewhere? I think a single source to watch and collect the abuses of this agency would be helpful in mounting a reform or removal of the TSA

Surely you're not suggesting it's impossible to spend two grand on a Windows laptop. You couldn't be that ignorant, or incapable of spending ten seconds on Newegg making sure you're not an imbecile.

While there's still a few windows laptops selling in the $2000 range, there getting few and far between and most always in a specialty niche market, not to mention that I doubt many teenagers would own one. My guess would be the same, his parents are apple fans and it was a Mac.

The first piece of budgetary flotsam that should be cut is the TSA. Put every farking one of those bottom feeders out of work, and starve their kids to death so that they become a genetic dead end. In 200 years our descendants will thank us for culling their defective DNA from the pool.

Surely you're not suggesting it's impossible to spend two grand on a Windows laptop. You couldn't be that ignorant, or incapable of spending ten seconds on Newegg making sure you're not an imbecile.

While there's still a few windows laptops selling in the $2000 range, there getting few and far between and most always in a specialty niche market, not to mention that I doubt many teenagers would own one. My guess would be the same, his parents are apple fans and it was a Mac.

I'm amused. If only because it's less than half what my laptops run me -before- the OS gets decided.

Most things a TSA employee steals is going to be untraceable. They either don't have GPS or they do but are impractical for people to track. What percentage of items passing through an airport are able to transmit their location to the actual owner, and is configured to do so? I mean, it's got to be pretty small.

And then, of those devices....let's say *I* stole a laptop. I'd wipe it's contents without giving it access to the internet. Easy enough, right? Absolutely. It just happened that either the store had unsecured wi-fi and the laptop was set to connect to any access point it could find, or he just happened to find an employee who took the time to manually boot up, provide the credentials for the network, *AND* the original owner was savvy enough to see it had been connected?

Going from someone saying, 'I lost my bag at the airport' to 'TSA officer #2812 stole that bag' requires a huge sequence of unlikely events.

In order for someone to get caught stealing, it would suggest they've been stealing A LOT.

// Time to start a new government organization to police the TSA./// To be honest, I think we got what we deserved. People don't remember, but after 9-11 just about everyone was happy enough to give away/trample on our rights and freedoms in the name of safety.

One of these days, I am going to get drunk before a flight and stick a Timex up my ass just to see the reaction of TSA agents. When I get interrogated I will just tell them I like to keep my bowel movements regular. Keep the watch guys!

Surely you're not suggesting it's impossible to spend two grand on a Windows laptop. You couldn't be that ignorant, or incapable of spending ten seconds on Newegg making sure you're not an imbecile.

Not impossible but don't you need a internet connection to do a factory reinstall on Mac's/iPads are a different story

No... you CAN do your backups to your "icloud", or you can have the OS create itself a little restore partition. If you have an optical drive you can do full installs from that all day long, whether it's a built in drive or usb.(if you downloaded the os you can burn it to a dvd).